The stories behind the buildings, statues and other points of interest that make Manhattan fascinating.

Saturday, July 26, 2014

Janes & Leo's 1899 Row at Nos. 301-307 W 105th St.

Along with the commission to design The Alimar, an exuberant
seven-story apartment house on West End Avenue, developer Hamilton M. Weed gave
architects Janes & Leo the job of designing four abutting homes around the
corner at Nos. 301 to 307 West 105th Street.By 1898 the Upper West Side vied with the
most fashionable neighborhoods of Manhattan as upscale homes rose on its
streets and massive mansions were built on its avenues.

As was The Alimar, the houses were completed in 1899.The architects created an ensemble of high-end
American basement homes which were unafraid to announce they were intended for
the wealthy.The stone bases of all four
extended to the property line; but only No. 301 continued straight upward—possibly
because of the party wall of the Alimar next door.Nos. 303 to 307 stepped back, allowing for
bay windows, balconies and a bowed front on No. 307.Perhaps for visual balance, Janes & Leo
perfectly matched the center homes while treating the end structures individually
but harmoniously.

Within a year the upscale homes began to sell.When Weed sold No. 301 on March 21, 1901, The
New York Times mentioned “This is the second house sold out of a row of four
recently completed.”James R. Thomson
was the buyer; but he resold it less than a year later, on January 17, 1902, to
Thomas M. Turner.Turner’s mortgage was
$30,000—around $785,000 today.

No. 301 was the odd man out design-wise.

The following summer the Turners had a house guest, 23-year
old Helen Blair of Kentucky.Helen’s father
was “very rich,” as reported in The Sun, and she was stopping on her way home from
Paris.One of the souvenirs the young
woman had picked up in France was an automobile, “an electric phaeton.”It arrived in New York on the ship with
Helen.

What Helen Blair was unaware of was the newly enacted
Bailey Law which required all private vehicles to exhibit “the proper tag for
identification.”And so on June 25, 1903
as she was care-freely motoring along 72nd Street between Amsterdam
and Columbus Avenues, Mounted Policeman McKenna stopped and arrested her.

“The policeman insisted on getting into the machine with
Mrs. [sic] Blair and leading his horse after it to the West Sixty-eighth Street
Station,” reported The New York Times the following day.She was the first woman arrested for
violating the new law and newspapers eagerly reported the incident.

Helen’s automobile was impounded pending her getting license
plates; but there was a problem.None of
the police officers at the station knew how to drive a car.Sergeant Tierney asked if she would mind
driving it to the police stables and she politely consented.“The spectacle of a uniformed policeman
sitting in an automobile with a woman driving aroused much interest,” reported
The Times.

When Helen Blair appeared in the West Side Court the
following day, she pleaded innocence of the law and told the judge she had
already applied for a license.Magistrate Zeller discharged her, prompting The Evening World to run the
headline “Fair Chauffeuse Freed.”

No. 301 continued to experience rapid turnover in
ownership.In September 1904 Thomas
Turner sold it to Moses Harlam, who resold it to Julius C. Landon in 1905.In the meantime real estate operator Albert
Brod bought up the remainder of the row in 1901.

Of them, only No. 305 would have a long-term owner thoughout their
early years.In May 1901 Brod sold No.
305 to Albert Goldman, the Director of the Mutual Chemical Company of Jersey
City and a Director of the Tartar Chemical Co.The Goldman family consisted of wife, Augusta, and three children,
Harry, Sophie and Lillian.

The Goldmans lived at No. 305 for at least 14 years.

It was apparently a forward-thinking family, for nine years
later daughter Lillian was attending the Woman’s Law Class at New York University.In 1910 the very concept of a female lawyer
was shocking to most.Augusta Goldman
died in the house on August 10, 1914 and the family would not remain here many
years longer.

Wealthy families continued, for years, to inhabit the
row.Until 1913 Jose R. Barrios lived at
No. 303.He was a wealthy, retired exporter
of coal to Cuba and a veteran of the Cuban army.He died of a heart attack while riding the
Third Avenue streetcar on September 27, that year.And on May 10, 1920 the owners of No. 307
made preparations to close the house for the summer.An advertisement in The New York Herald that
day read “A lady closing her house in June would like to secure country
position for her chambermaid—assist waiting—whom she can highly recommend.”

By now No. 303 was home to retired broker Edward B. Stearns
and his wife.Early in December 1921 the
couple traveled to Stamford, Connecticut to spend the weekend.Edward Stearns would not return home.

No. 303 was a match to the Goldman mansion next door.

The 44-year old left the Taylor home with another house
guest, 30-year old James D. Robbins, “to make some purchases.”As Stearns’ roadster was traveling along Cove
Road, it came across a couple walking alongside the road.Joseph H. Luboky and his 19-year old wife
were returning home from a movie.

According to the New-York Tribune on December 5, Stearns was
“traveling at high speed.”When Luboky
heard the roar of the motor coming from behind, he tried to pull his wife
further away from the pavement.But the
automobile struck the woman, throwing her 20 feet, killing her.Both Stearns and Robbins were thrown from the
car.Edward Stearns suffered a fatal
skull fracture and Robbins’ neck was broken.

The Stearns mansion was purchased by cotton broker Layden
Harriss.He was a member of the Firm
Harriss-Irby & Vose.No. 303 West
105th Street became the scene of a violent struggle on June 5, 1924
when around 1:00 in the morning Harris heard a noise and “trailed a burglar
whose progress from room to room and floor to floor was indicated by occasional
flashes of an electric torch,” reported The Times.

In the living room, the broker sprang upon the burglar in the
dark.He may have thought better of it
after the battle was on, however.John Bernauer
had been out of Sing Sing prison for only three weeks and the newspaper said “Particular
note was taken of his powerful hands and bulging shoulder muscles…Bernauer
admitted, according to the detectives, that by working on the coal pile at Sing
Sing and by constantly chinning himself and performing all the gymnastics that
his small cell would permit, he had kept himself fit.”

Nevertheless Harriss held his own and the commotion of the
fight “aroused the house and neighborhood and attracted many policemen.”When Bernauer appeared in a line up regarding
earlier burglaries, it was noted that his “right eye had been badly blacked in
the fight with the cotton broker.”

Following Harriss’ death on Sunday, September 27 the
following year, a requiem high mass was celebrated and his funeral held in St.
Patrick’s Cathedral.

The homes would not survive into the second half of the century as
private mansions.No. 301 was the first
to be converted.On July 25, 1935 The
New York Times reported that Mrs. Grace E. Gumbiner had leased “for five years
a former private house at 301 West 105th Street, now being remodeled
into one and two room apartments.”The
newspaper added “She has operated various furnished apartment houses.”

Five years later Nos. 305 and 307 were converted to
apartments—two per floor.And in 1946
No. 303 was given the same make-over.

Interior details have been gutted in No. 305 and the brick walls exposed--the antithesis of turn-of-the-century taste. photo http://www.corcoran.com/nyc/Listings/Display/3113930

Outwardly little has changed to the especially handsome row
of homes.Inside, misguided
modernization has brutalized some of the spaces.But Janes & Leo’s wonderful group
survives as a striking reminder of the fashionable lifestyles of the Upper West
Side at the turn of the last century.